New York, December 6, 2011--The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns the targeting of media by supporters of various political
factions in Kurdistan. Journalists have been attacked and arrested in Iraqi
Kurdistan and six media offices have been attacked in the past four days, according
to news reports.

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New York, September 9, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Thursday evening's killing of Iraqi
journalist, filmmaker, and playwright Hadi al-Mahdi in Baghdad and calls on Iraqi authorities to
immediately take steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.

Al-Mahdi, radio show host and critic of the government, was
shot dead in his home on Abu Nawas
Street in the Baghdad neighborhood of al-Jidida on Thursday
evening, Agence France-Presse reported.
The Associated Press reported
that a police officer said the journalist had been shot by gunmen using pistols
outfitted with silencers. Witnesses at the crime scene told Human
Rights Watch that they saw no evidence of a struggle or theft and that the
journalist's valuables were left untouched. CPJ is investigating to
determine whether the death was work-related.

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New York, August 31, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists condemns Monday's brutal assault on Kurdish
journalist Asos Hardi and calls on Kurdish authorities to immediately take
steps to bring the perpetrators to justice.

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New York, June 23, 2011--The
Committee to Protect Journalists mourns the death of cameraman Alwan al-Ghorabi,
who died in the southern city of Diwaniyya when a car bomb exploded in the city
center on Tuesday.

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Few cases of sexual assault against journalists have ever
been documented, a product of powerful cultural and professional stigmas. But
now dozens of journalists are coming forward to say they have been sexually
abused in the course of their work. A
CPJ special report by Lauren Wolfe

We
write a lot at CPJ about the terrible things that happen to journalists because
of their reporting, but we don't often get a chance to show you what happens to
them after they are forced
to flee their homes and land abroad. This video, about three such
journalists, is worth watching.

Kurdistan is different, as nearly every Iraqi Kurd I have
ever met has said. Far less violent than the rest of Iraq since the U.S.-led
invasion in 2003, the parts of the north controlled by the Kurdish Regional
Government have escaped the kind of sectarian unrest that continues to flare in
the south. But in recent months more than 150 Iraqi Kurdish journalists have
been injured or attacked, according to the local Metro
Center to Defend Journalists. One journalist was murdered three years ago
in Kirkuk after uncovering evidence of government corruption. But most of the journalists who find
themselves more recently under siege have been covering violent clashes
between the Kurdish security forces and protestors in Sulaymaniyah.